Chewing Gum Paper.2011: Some silver paper balls scatter on a drum surface. They are jumping and moving with the fragmented“ I Have A Dream”，the lecture record of Martin Luther king. Video still, photo by Cheng Ran

Still from Zhou Tao, one day (changsha), 2010

One of China’s most important video artists, winner of the Chinese Contemporary Art Award from the Chinese Contemporary Art Association in 2000, Jiang Zhi reflects on various aspects of modern China’s turbulent society, from the estrangement of individual existence to the hectic pace of our social lives. In an early video, Fly, Fly (1997), he films a hand mimicking the flapping wings of a bird in a cramped city apartment. Confined in a small room, one feels subjugated to the self and to everything around; at the same time, one experiences tranquility, fantasies, boredom, and passion—all ways of transcending reality and escaping, just like flying.